barenaked ladies are men

It never ceases to amaze how the Barenaked Ladies have, for most of my life, been able to produce albums which are completely relevant to the current stage of my life...

Gordon came out the first year I was in High School, filled with teen angst and silly fun...

The dramatic irony, pure energetic fun, sadness, ridiculous growing pains and intense changes of Maybe you Should Drive, Born on a Pirate Ship and Stunt perfectly described the challenges of college...

Maroon came out the year after I graduated from college and I found myself relating more to the serious side as I got involved in politics, came to grips with cube working at my first "real" job and fell in love harder than ever before.

Everything to Everyone came out the year I took the next step on my journey, moved out west to California

Last year brought Barenaked Ladies are Me... which, well kinda proves the point, that I'm sure they've heard this all before.

But today I listened to a song from the Barenaked Ladies Are Men for the first time and had to stand up from my desk to prevent people from watching me start crying... we're all so human and experiences are so common.

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You're looking for something
That you'll never find
You've got the questions
You've got the time
You've got the bruises
To show you've been blind
'Cause you're looking for something
That you'll never find

I'm hoping you'll find it
And someday you might
But not in an instant
And not overnight
And not in the one who's holding you tight
I'm hoping you'll find it
And someday you might

Could you be the one?
Could you be the one who will find it?
Staring at the sun has you blinded
Could you be the one who will find that it's fine if it's not in me?

You're looking for something
That's not even there
You're knocking down tables
You're kicking in chairs
I know you're angry
You know I don't care
You're looking for something
That's not even there

Make me an offer
That I can't refuse
Set up my options
Force me to choose
You've been abandoned
And I've been abused
So make me an Offer
That I can't refuse

Could you be the one?
Could you be the one who will find it?
Staring at the sun has you blinded
Could you be the one who will find that it's fine if it's not in me?

Over in Indiana
Wearing their red bandanas
Indians eat bananas
Thinking they're full
Of Vitamin C

You're looking for someone
That I'll never be
Some kind of bondage
To make you feel free
A lover, a savior
Well, that isn't me
You're looking for someone
That I'll never be

Could you be the one?
Could you be the one who will find it?
Staring at the sun has you blinded
Could you be the one who will find that it's fine if it's not in me?

barenaked ladies are me

I 'came into' a promo copy of some of the new songs off Barenaked Ladies upcoming album Barenaked Ladies Are Me from Nettwork this week at work. Now, I usually have a rule about not listening to albums in progress or downloading bits of them before it has been released. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to hear the new songs surrounded by the rest of the album, in the space the artists have painstakingly chosen. But 8/15 of the new songs taunting me from my iTunes list proved too much to resist.

I've been listening to the album on and off today. I'm still very much in that getting to know it stage where I try to absorb the lyrics and the sounds, discovering all of its magic. I am reminded again of the love I have for Ed's funny-yet-seeped-in-ironic-depth lyrics when this gem passes by in the song Take it Back:

"Think of all the lives/
Saved by plastic knives."

Fucking brilliant.

This song was followed by one of the best fun bass-lines ever in Everything Had Changed .... Jimmy there you are. Kevin's playing the mandolin again... is that the shiny accordion? Wow Steve’s voice is so very Broadway on this one… the flood of 12 years of my own Barenaked memories flood back and quite suddenly I’m home.

Sometimes listening to new music of a band you've loved forever is a lot like discovering an old friend and other times it's like putting on a comfy sweater. It envelopes you in its warmth and familiarity. It's a lot like coming home.


"That’s when I knew where I was...
That's when that I was.. home."

All that you will see.. is a Celebrity

So after Friday's trip to a convention for a community that I don't understand at all, don't belong to, but am somehow a bit of a minor celebrity in (further confusion - furries are a large community within Second Life, the community I help manage), I started thinking about fame.

I've met many famous and semi-famous people in my life, even got to hang out with some of them. Hell, I've even got pictures... that made me wonder how many pictures I really had.

Cleveland, OH 1998 - Tori Amos is too cute for words:
click here

Ann Arbor, MI 1999 (?) - first or second time I met Henry Rollins:


Cleveland, OH 2000 - the second time I met Neil Gaiman, I remembered the film:


Dayton, OH 2001 - One of the many times I've got to hang with BNL:


Albuquerque, NM 2001 - Scotland's own Proclaimer brothers:


Denver, CO 2002 - Henry Rollins gets frisky the 3rd or 4th time I met him:


Denver, CO 2003 - Me and Ron Sexsmith:


I'm missing some that aren't scanned in... and usually when I've met someone famous as part of a job I didn't get to take a pic, but it is definitely a different thing to be the person getting a picture requested (which happened Friday several times). It's just... kinda odd.

Another Year, Another List of Things to Fix

New Years resolutions have always been something I think a lot about this time of year. How can I make this year the best, the brightest, the most shiny of all years? Vowing to lose 10 pounds, go to the gym more often, eat more healthily and manage my time and friendships/family better are always the big ones.

Good goals I guess, they're definitely things I am always trying to improve upon in both my day-to-day and year-to-year goal setting. But I must always feel like I fall short, because every year, they're on the forefront of my mind, as clockwork as the ball dropping. Perhaps that is the most upsetting part of this begininning of the year rush for self-improvement. Maybe I'd be better off trying to do less this year, instead of more. Who can be sure?

body image

It was never about boys, for me at least. The whole 'weight loss' thing. I never had a problem finding a boy to fall in love with, irregardless of what popular media would have you believe or my waist size. Hell, they chased after me as much as the next '20-something hottie' (as my current beau would call me) and I never found myself out of the game because of my size.

Well, that's not entirely true, there was the case of a certain ex in college, whom I crushed on from afar for several semesters. He was taller than I and just as 'sturdy'... but after a brief, fiery few moments stolen here and there, he confessed that I just 'wasn't his type' and we immediately cooled off. He never came out and said it, but I think it was because of another girl back in his home state. What he was sure to tell me about this dream girl of his (whether real or imagined) was that she was "much smaller" than I was. Whatever. He ended up marrying a wonderful woman who's much, much shorter than I am, so perhaps it was all about height after all.

I was only joking... LoL

New Scientist reports that Understanding Sarcasm is a Complex Business - from the article:

Different parts of the brain must work together to understand sarcasm, new research suggests. The prefrontal cortex - a small area in the front of the brain - seems to play the biggest role and may integrate the literal meaning of a phrase with the speaker’s emotional intent. The findings on the anatomy of sarcasm could have implications for understanding personality changes in people with brain injury or disease.

"Decision making, emotional processing, empathy, and theory of mind all appear to be involved in understanding sarcasm," says lead researcher Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a neuropsychologist at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel.

This helps explain why interpreting sarcasm (and humor of any type possibly) is even harder when people are morphed into a text-only online world as well. I think it's common for people reading online text to focuse very closely on the most obvious meaning, which is why satire is missed (even when accompanied with an emoticon). It also reaffirms my belief that sarcasm is a higher form of wit:

Based on the findings, Shamay-Tsoory suggests that understanding sarcasm requires a series of events - the brain’s language areas interpret the literal meaning of a statement, the right hemisphere and frontal lobes process the emotional context, while the prefrontal cortex integrates the two.

It also presents a challenge for those of us who live in virtual spaces - how to maintain separate 'voices' for the real world and for virtual spaces, while maintaining our sarcastic tone. ;)